The love of home

Without doubt the most significant recent contribution to conservative thought in the English speaking world has come from the philosopher Roger Scruton, and this is in addition to his contributions to our understanding of both the aesthetics of music and architecture. Over the last 30 years or so he had written a series of books that demonstrate the enduring qualities of the conservative disposition. I believe that his most important contribution is one of his most recent books, Green Philosophy, published in 2012. In this book Scruton seeks to make the conservative case for conservatism and the preservation of the natural environment. But in doing so, he raises many of the issues he has discussed in his earlier work, such that we can see Green Philosophy as Scruton’s magnum opus, where he is able to lay out his conservative philosophy it all its detail.

In all of his works Scruton has shown the importance of our local roots. He has discussed in several of his books the importance of England to him and how the laws, customs and traditions of the country are drawn from the soil. Indeed, it is this link to the local that I take to be Scruton’s most important contribution to conservative thought, namely, that conservatism is literally the love of home.

However, Scruton does not help himself here in developing this crucial idea. This is because he chose to give it the rather unfortunate name of oikophilia. It is unfortunate because we live in age that is largely ignorant of the classical languages and so the meaning of the term is not readily apparent to many. Indeed, it is all too easy to link the term to something completely different as the term appears to be referring to a love of ‘oiks’ and also might actually appear to be a celebration of the rude and uppity.

This is unfortunate because this idea is fundamental to understanding the nature of conservatism. In fact I would go so far as to suggest that we could define conservatism as the love of home. We place great store on the local and the familiar, on what we know and consequently have developed a great affection for. We are prepared to die for our home and this is precisely because it gives us a purpose for living. It shows that what is important to us is the here and now, those palpable and ever present things that give our lives meaning.

We are beings that dwelling: we need to be settled and relish the permanence of our connection with our home. It gives us security and allows us the complacency we need in order to fulfill our chosen ends free from the concerns of subsistence and survival. Without a home we cannot function as individuals or as a society. It is what gives us a focus; home identifies us for what we are and locates us. This is the key conservative insight: that we are located beings who have a naturally affinity to what we already know. From this flows all that we know and understand about the conservative disposition: the love for the past, the ties to the land, the affection for a particular community of people and its institutions, a love of our culture and the desire to maintain and protect it. This is what makes conservatism so uniquely appealing. It is also what both annoys and frightens the progressives, who see this as a direct challenge to their desire for change and belief in human perfectibility. Conservatism has to be opposed and denigrated at all costs because it is a standing example of the wrongheadedness of progress and modernism.

This is why we need to state clearly and precisely what it is that we are seeking to preserve. We cannot afford to obscure the idea by attaching a misleading label. We have to show plainly that what we are considered with and what matters to us is simply the love of home.

I am a young supporter of many of these views. And mostly, feellings.
I have been a traveller through Europe and there are many places i feel related. But it is different than being at home. Travelling through other countries specially those wild amazing outdoors like Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, etc..of are unique experiences for the soul. Yet it is a part of life. A movement part and a learning, a state of spirit. But then there is always the come back home. Be it in the green lands of central Spain for example. Feeling related – its a real feeling, often understimated ! – in a way hard to explain. Dynamic still -in the relations with the landscape. And the more distant from big cities the better. Take smaller and (therefore healthier) cities but surrounded by countryside so we can relate to authentic things and authentic countryside living, comunity brethren and so on. A land of growth and roots. Well, in recent years, i as a traveller ( and loving it…) had felt often like the bird who wants to feel and experience, but always willing to RETURN. So it is, and its a wish and a will. Always present. Homeland, a place of belonging, its smells, its colors, its textures, its traditions. Its inherently a part of me and i know that i am home and there is this strange yet beautiful sense of feeling homeland a living thing, rocks, rivers and all of that.
Yet, and with the euro crisis, there is a severe threath to us around here in the South. It causing terrible consequences, as even depression. If the crisis and its devilish tentacles took away our jobs, how will we struggle, how will we resist and stay in our homeland? The defenders of the “absolute adaptation” of mankind to live wherever the jobs are are forcing us up to this: go to where are jobs. But then there is a major consequence – what if we dont feel related with the place where i am going? I am not a machine, i have a heart and a soul. I cannot leave Europe because doing this i will be broken in so many ways. Because globalization masters and also the brainwashed society tells that we should go to where are jobs. As if we did not have feelings and soul. And mostly highly against our will, and losing the faith in any kind of revolution that can rupture the actual situation in Iberian Peninsule and the likes, we actually have to go, sometimes for other countries, in extremes situations when there are hunger, poverty, exploitation setting in our lives, and all the “evil System” things forced upon us.Its a severe situation, because pushes us against the wall and force us to leave our lands, where our hearts and belonging feel are – and where we can be and feel and live and fullfill who we are, and force us to exile – with the axe of crisis hanging over our heads ready to kill us. Comunities, not only families, get broken, and then the possible followers of traditions, art, music, culture and LIFE, are forced to go and depart not only away from their homes, but also away from themlseles. And that, for me, is the begginning of a inner, slow death. Sorry for the long text, i was well, venting out this i consider important and it is actually destroying more and more identity and culture, as well as families and people inside – depression, sorrow and loss… Thanks for the attention